Teaching information literacy skills: an evaluation

This paper describes an evaluation of a curriculum-integrated information l iteracy programme in an undergraduate nursing course. The aim of the progra mme was to provide students with an awareness of the discipline's literatur e and the skills to locate and retrieve the literature. A multidimensional process for determining nursing students' development was utilised in the e valuation of the programme. Pre- and post-programme questionnaires were dis tributed to a cohort of students who undertook the programme. A cohort of m ore senior students who had not undertaken the information literacy program me was utilised as a comparison group. Questionnaire results were analysed using a range of inferential statistics. This paper will focus on two main findings related to objective measures of information literacy skills. Thes e include pre-programme/post-programme change in student performance and di fferences in student performance between those who undertook the programme and those who did not. The programme demonstrated its effectiveness in deve loping information literacy skills, however the challenge remains for both academics and students to ensure that these skills are consolidated and ext ended for effective life-long learning. (C) 2000 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.